Tribute field requirement- workaround language?

Amber Gichard

We have had many donors recently who struggle with the tribute field. We have relabeled it "THIS GIFT IS IN HONOR/MEMORY OF" and added description text of "Please leave Type box blank if your gift is not in honor/memory of someone.", but in order to offer this field, BBNC requires that the Tribute Name be completed if an option is chosen from the Type dropdown. So many donors are not realizing they are choosing an option in the dropdown and are getting very frustrated with the requirement - to the extent that they aren't giving! 

Does anyone have some workaround language that would better explain this to donors? Blackbaud will not allow us to turn off the requirement of completing the name field. (and when donors put "N/A", then NetCommunity wants us to find that tribute when batching...



 

Charles Babian

I really feel this functions poorly -- your work around is helpful.

So many of our parents think they have to use this field to get their classroom participation "credit" for their children.

Then theirs the person who wants to give "in honor of all my fellow grads."

Ridiculous that they can't communicate these things without having to create a record for the tributee.

Amber Gichard

We do also have a "fake" tribute under my record in RE for those "N/A" or error tributes that we don't want to be linked to an actual record. Then when batching we remove the tribute, but if we forget to remove the link, we know its on my dummy tribute so nothing would get sent out to me on those gifts.


We still have donors getting very frustrated with the "requirement" of this field when they don't realize they made a selection on the dropdown in the first place...